Reference is made to commonly assigned copending applications Ser. No. 09/178,696, entitled xe2x80x9cSystem and Method of Constructing a Photo Collagexe2x80x9d; application Ser. No. 09/136,395 entitled xe2x80x9cSystem and Method of Constructing a Photo Album filed Nov. 30, 1998 in the names of John R. Squilla, Stephen L Shaffer, and John K. McBride, which is assigned to the assignee of this application.
The invention relates generally to the field of photography, and in particular to photo collections. More specifically, the invention relates to a method of generating a photo album using reduced resolution sticker versions of a customer""s photographs having the capability to add decorative graphics.
Photographs, videos, and memorabilia collections are very commonly used to maintain memories and events that formed a part of a person""s life. These collections serve to augment the human memory and enrich the process of sharing stories related to the memories. When organized, viewed and shared on a regular basis a collection of memory artifacts generates a large reward, enriching the lives of all involved. The nature of these collections is such that they grow steadily, event by event, year by year, and soon become large and difficult to manage. Collections of photos and memorabilia are considered one of the most important and valued possessions by most people. They are the first things that people think of when forced to flee their homes due to fire, flood or other natural disaster. These collections possess emotional value, even if they are rarely viewed, because the intrinsic need to preserve lives memories is strong and universal. Because of the relative importance of these memories to the persons involved, the prior art is replete with teachings that disclose organizational methods.
The most common manner of organizing these collections within the prior art is to place the photos, videos or memorabilia into either an album or a box. Common vinyl album pages provide the means to store and view between one and five standard sized photos per page. Creative people often spend hours carefully selecting and arranging photos, writing captions, clipping newspaper articles, and other memorabilia to create visual stories or scrapbooks. Once organized into groups or pages these photocollages greatly enhance a person""s ability to remember and share the story surrounding the depicted events. These simple organization tools allow the collections to be easily viewed and also serves to protect the artifacts themselves. There are numerous types of albums and boxes available in the market today, ranging from simple vinyl sleeves to boxes manufactured from specialized materials designed to preserve the artifacts. Album vendors include Pioneer Photo Albums, Design Vinyl and Cason-Talens. Box vendors include Exposures. None of these prior art disclosures provide a means by which a photocollage of these memorable events can be easily constructed by persons to who these event means so much.
As used herein photocollage refers to a single page having a plurality of images, such as a page in a photo album, or a composite image having a number of images relating to a single theme such as a vacation, wedding, birthday party or the like. The concept of photocollage as used herein also includes the concept of a bound photo album having a plurality of pages, one or more of which is a photocollage.
Despite the fact that many people are engaged in collecting these memorable artifacts, few people have the free time available to invest on a regular basis to organize and maintain them. Before long, the amount of unorganized material becomes a significant psychological barrier to getting organized. Other barriers exist which prevent people from actively maintaining these memorabilia collections such as confidence in their process, access to the materials, or remembering the details about the event. Often, once people get started on this organizational task they find it rewarding and fun, but still a significant amount of work.
Many attempts have been made to provide tools for working with or organizing photo and memorabilia collections. Computer software programs such as Picture-It(trademark), by Microsoft, or Creative Photo Albums(trademark), by Dog Byte Development, allow people to work with digital versions of their photos and create digital versions of an album or print them on a home printer. Software products such as these require that each photo or artifact exist in digital form before they can be used. Although these products increase the ability to change and enhance photos and scanned memorabilia they do not reduce the amount of work needed to organize collections or create visual stories. Other services such as Photo-Net(trademark) by PictureVision(trademark) will scan photographs in a high-quality format at the time of photo processing and provide a thumbnail image of the scanned images via the Internet. A customer, using these scanned images can create collections of photos which can be viewed on the Internet or have prints generated. Currently some of these services do not allow for the arrangement of several photos on a page and are limited to consumers who have a collection of digital images and a computer connected to the Internet and who are both computer and web literate.
Prior art disclosures as represented by previously filed applications for xe2x80x9cA SYSTEM AND METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING PHOTO ALBUMS WITH STICKERSxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cA SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONSTRUCTING PHOTO ALBUMSxe2x80x9d assigned commonly with the present invention have taught the creation of photo albums by using, as a selection device, reduced resolution versions of images requiring less storage space than the full resolution versions. The prior art has also taught the use of these reduced resolution images in generation of photo albums and photocollages via thumbnail sketches and stickers that are uniquely identified with their high resolution counterparts that are contained in a data base. However, these prior art disclosures did not provide a methodology whereby, the photo albums to be created can have their entire layout selected and previewed by the customer.
It should be apparent from the foregoing discussion that there remains a need within the art for a method by which consumers can create photo albums and have them made for them in a previously selected manner that is as simple as ordering prints.
The present invention addresses the foregoing discussed shortcomings in the prior art by providing a method for creating photo albums wherein the customers can select and preview the entire layout of the photoalbum. The individual pages are created as a series of photocollages from sticker layout forms that are filled with index stickers. Each of the index stickers has a low resolution version of an image with a unique identifier correlating the index sticker to a high resolution version of the image that can be quickly accessed from a database file. The index stickers fit on individual layout sticker sheets, the layout sticker sheets are stickers that are used to form the individual pages of the photoalbum. The present invention includes decorative stickers having unique identifiers that identify a specific event or location to each of the decorative stickers. Accordingly, the present invention addresses the need for an improved method of generating photo albums from consumer photographs whereby, the customer selects that exact orientation of the images that will comprise the photoalbum and that requires a minimum amount of effort but yields a high-quality product and is reasonably priced.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above. Briefly summarized, according to one aspect of the present invention, a method of constructing a photo album includes the steps of providing a plurality of images; generating a sticker sheet of reduced resolution images from the full resolution digital images, the sticker sheet including a machine readable means for identifying the high resolution images to be included in the photo album represented by the reduced resolution stickers; selecting one or more of the reduced resolution images on the sticker sheet; placing the reduced resolution stickers onto a page layout sheet which indicates size of the image on the page, number of images per page, and textual additions, reading the selected reduced resolution images on the page layout sheet with a scanner; and constructing a photo album, or a photocollage from the digital images represented by the selected reduced resolution images and layout sheets.
These and other aspects, objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be more clearly understood and appreciated from a review of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments and appended claims, and by reference to the accompanying drawings.
The present invention has the following advantages: Allows the user to have (1) an easy method of choosing photos and laying them out as photocollages on pages for creating professional looking photo albums which can be previewed instantly, (2) duplication of the photo albums, and (3) keeping the photo albums as files for later use.